


Bacon Is The Answer To All Life's Problems

by eeyore9990



Series: 30 Thankful Days (2016) [8]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: 2016 US Presidential Election, Alcohol, Drunken Shenanigans, Drunkenness, Hangover, M/M, Woke Up Married, so much bacon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-11
Updated: 2016-11-11
Packaged: 2018-08-30 07:56:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8525035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eeyore9990/pseuds/eeyore9990
Summary: After the election results come in, Stiles uses his long weekend to go visit Derek in Nevada because running away from all of life's problems sounds like the best of all possible choices.  Shenanigans ensue.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Inell](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inell/gifts).



> 30 Thankful Days, Day 8: Gift for Inell.

Stiles turned on the election coverage, excited at first and ready to watch Trump be completely and totally decimated. Then, as the night wore on, he felt more and more shocked, more and more _sick_ , and then… and then he just sat there in his dark apartment, listening to the quiet, shocked commentators, refreshing fivethirtyeight.com over and over, pinching bruises into his skin because he just knew this was a nightmare.

 

It was a nightmare that he wanted nothing more than to wake up from, and he felt like if he just pinched himself hard enough, he'd do it. He'd wake up.

 

Finally, exhaustion overcame his shock and he stood up, not even bothering to turn off the television or lock his front door because… really, what was the point?

 

And then he went to sleep, his mind carefully, blissfully blank.

 

\--

 

Waking up the next morning was much of the same. He stumbled through the day, finally feeling horror beginning to push aside the shock and numbness that had settled over him in the aftermath of the election that night as he drove home from the station.

 

And it was in that fresh state of horror that he called Scott. When Scott's phone went to voicemail -- oh yeah, he was at that vet's thing in Santa Monica -- Stiles hung up and called Derek. It didn't matter that Derek was down in Nevada, Stiles _needed_ to talk to him and--

 

" _Stiles? What's wrong?_ "

 

"Trump is president elect and Pence is his vice president. Did I accidentally turn the Nemeton back on?" Stiles asked, voice beginning to shake as badly as his hands. Pressing the speaker icon, he tossed the phone down on the seat beside him and pulled over to the side of the road, shoving the Jeep in neutral and just putting his head on the steering wheel as what felt like the biggest panic attack of his life began to tighten his lungs.

 

" _Breathe_."

 

"I-" _gasp_ "-am." 

 

" _Stiles. Stiles, listen to me. It's November 9th, okay? November. There are two and a half months to go before the inauguration, the electoral college doesn't even meet for a few more weeks…_ " It sounded like Derek was grasping at straws, and that should have panicked Stiles more, but it actually started to settle him instead. 

 

Just the sound of Derek rattled enough to start rambling was enough to shock Stiles out of his own panic and into the mindset of 'take care of Derek' that Stiles was almost instantly better.

 

"Scott's out of town," Stiles said, completely changing the subject in a way that could _not_ be a surprise to Derek, not after their many years of … whatever they were.

 

Friends/acquaintances/comrades in arms. Pack mates? Whatever.

 

" _Do you want me to come there?_ " Derek asked and there was no judgement in the question, nothing but just a real, honest offer. 

 

Stiles felt his throat grow thick with something a lot like tears at that, a thickness he cleared away with a rough cough before he thought about the fact that his schedule had lined up to give him an entire four days in a row off -- a rarity that had seemed to portend a long weekend of celebrating their first woman president two days ago and now seemed like exactly enough time to get so black-out drunk that he might forget the previous forty eight hours and what they meant for the future of the country.

 

"How about this?" Stiles said, putting the Jeep back into gear and easing onto the road, clicking on his blinker as he approached the gas station on the corner. "Mind if I come to you instead? I could use a vacation."

 

" _Of course. You know you're always welcome._ "

 

\--

 

Black-out drunk was not exactly the best thing to wake up from, Stiles decided as he reached up and tried to use his hands to hold his skull together. Apparently he'd been in a horrifying automobile accident or something that had shattered it and sent every last sharp piece of bone directly into his brain.

 

Or… or he just had a really fucking massive hangover. 

 

He kinda hoped it was the former, honestly, because that would mean that eventually a nice doctor would come along and give him some morphine or something. Instead, he rolled over and fell off the bed, because Derek had some idea that a single bed was good enough for his guest bedroom and… ugh.

 

Ugh.

 

Ugh and also ow.

 

"Ugh." 

 

Stiles started to nod his head, then went still, hands pressing a little harder against his skull in his confusion. He… hadn't uttered that last _ugh_.

 

Slitting his left eye open, he peered around blearily until he saw a hand -- a hand with a smattering of black hair over the visible knuckles -- dangling over the edge of the bed. With a massive amount of effort, Stiles reached over and grabbed onto the edge of the mattress and pulled until he was sitting upright. Well, slumped face-first against the side of the bed, but with his head higher than his ass, so that was probably a good thing. A thing of which to be proud.

 

Inchworming his face up the scratchy side of the mattress -- apparently the fitted sheet had come away from the corner nearest him -- Stiles finally achieved enough elevation to see over the top of the mattress. What he should probably have figured out based entirely on the hand he'd seen greeted his disbelieving gaze.

 

Derek was sleeping in his bed.

 

Then Stiles closed his left eye to rest it and opened his right eye, which rolled in its socket a little before focusing on the object of his confusion. And then his right eye took in a few more details and the confusion grew a few legs and wandered off because _apparently_ Derek was not in Stiles' bed but in his own bed?

 

What?

 

Brain unable to comprehend this development -- see above re: bone shards lodged therein -- Stiles opened his mouth to give voice to that question only to have it come out sounding like, "Wrrrgh?"

 

Derek whimpered and slapped his hands to the sides of his head, then whimpered again, more pitifully than before. And oh yeah, extra sensitive hearing on a good day.

 

Ouch. Poor dude.

 

Stiles melted upward, paying the laws of physics as much respect as he did on any other day, and ended up with most of his body back on top of the bed with only one leg still dangling off it. He oozed across the mussed sheets until his face was pressed against Derek's side, hiding his face from the really, truly demonic Nevada sun that was fucking _blaring_ through the crack in Derek's black-out curtains.

 

Seriously, what was the point in having black-out curtains if you weren't going to close them properly?

 

Also, "Do they call them black-out curtains because they're used to make the room completely dark or because, as I suspect, they were invented by poor hungover idiots who had to deal with the sun after a bender?"

 

"Shut," Derek whispered hoarsely. A few seconds went by before he finally seemed to realize he'd not finished his thought. "Up."

 

"'Kay. Sorry."

 

Resting his face against Derek felt good, actually. Like maybe Derek's skin was sucking a little of the pain directly from Stiles' head because…

 

\--

 

Stiles woke up when his foot, numb from his leg being hyperextended over the edge of the mattress for … however many hours it had been that he'd fallen back asleep, hit the post at the foot of the bed and sent a dull thud right up Stiles' leg. It was gross feeling, like any numb limb, and that grossness merged with the utterly queasy feeling in Stiles' stomach to have him scrambling for the side of the bed and the trashcan that some serious genius had left there.

 

When he had finished emptying his stomach, he sat up and grabbed his foot, which chose that moment to wake back up with stabbing pains shooting through it. Flopping onto his back with his knee held tight to his chest, Stiles rolled back and forth, whimpering softly.

 

A wet washcloth hit him in the face, and Stiles peeled his eyes open to see Derek standing at the foot of the bed with a look of complete judgement pulling his eyebrows nearly together. "Wake up, brush your teeth. I made bacon."

 

"Coffee?" Stiles asked, his voice so hoarse he winced at the sound of it and then winced again as that set more little hammers going off in his head.

 

"Not until you drink three glasses of water."

 

"Tylenol?"

 

Derek grunted and left the room, which… what the hell? Was that a yes or a no? "Was that a yes or a no?"

 

Another grunt floated from down the hallway, prompting Stiles to whisper, "Asshole."

 

"Takes one to know one!"

 

Grumbling harder, Stiles sat up and swiped the washcloth over his face and neck before he gingerly got up and tested the hold of his foot. When it accepted his weight, he limped to the bathroom and joyously used Derek's plain blue toothbrush because yeah, it _did_ take one to know one.

 

Feeling redeemed, at least a little, Stiles staggered down the hallway, following the faint scent of bacon into the bright -- _bright light, bright light!!_ \-- kitchen. There he surrendered his weight to the first stool he found and picked up a glass of room temperature water which he started guzzling like the winning lotto numbers were at the bottom of the glass. When he set it down, empty, he had to take a moment to convince his stomach not to immediately reject every bit of it before he could commence breathing.

 

And then Derek set a plate literally filled with nothing but bacon on it onto the bar top in front of him and Stiles… felt tears fills his eyes because, "I love you so much."

 

"That's what the paper says," Derek muttered, which made no sense, but Stiles was too busy stuffing bacon into his mouth to mention it.

 

When he had to pause to chew and swallow or literally die, Stiles took a moment to explain, "I was talking to the bacon."

 

"Yeah, well, if you love it so much, divorce me and marry it."

 

Shoving more bacon in his mouth, Stiles just quirked his lips in a semi-decent attempt at a grin; Derek's humor had always been the 'trying too hard' variety and awkward at best, but Stiles did his best to encourage it because a humor _less_ Derek was just a sad, sad puppy. 

 

Awkward puppy was better than sad puppy any day of the week.

 

Derek set a piece of paper on the bar in front of Stiles, then placed a steaming mug of coffee directly on top of it, so it wasn't until Stiles had a massive mouthful of beautiful, life-giving caffeine that his eyes turned to the words on the page -- no, seriously, Stiles often read shampoo bottles and toothpaste tubes in the bathroom because _words_ \-- and that's how Stiles' first, very necessary mouthful of coffee ended up sprayed all across the _holy shit legal_ document.

 

"Yep," Derek said, his fucking pinky finger held aloft as he sipped his own coffee with judgment seeping out of every pore.

 

"Wh--" Stiles coughed harshly, trying to get his breakfast to stop killing him long enough to get the million questions trapped between his brain and his mouth out. 

 

"Marriage License, State of Nevada, County of Clark," Derek read out in a droning voice, then rattled off the license number and quirked an eyebrow at Stiles as he flawlessly pronounced Stiles' first, _legal_ name. 

 

And then, uh, _Derek's_ legal name.

 

Fuuuuuuuuck.

 

"I can explain," Stiles rushed to say, then… stopped. Because actually, he couldn't? Like, at all? "I have no memory of this place," he breathed, blinking dumbly at his nearly-empty plate. And then he picked up the last piece of bacon and bit into it cautiously, wondering if it would turn on him too.

 

But Derek was still there, in the background, and his whole lurking, looming presence dragged Stiles' attention back to him. Only, his eyebrows were a little less judgy than they'd been a few minutes ago and there was that vulnerable little twist of his mouth that made Stiles instantly want to grab his bat and defend Derek because…

 

Well, that's what vulnerable!Derek did to him, okay? 

 

Derek leaned against the counter on his side of the bar top and carefully set his coffee down, his eyes avoiding Stiles' as he began to speak, his voice just a touch too soft. "So we did the pre-bar thing here. And then we went out and drank more. And then we went into Las Vegas and you wanted to 'pull the thingy' so we played the slots at The Grand."

 

Stiles narrowed his eyes. "Did I shout, 'fuck you, Trump!' everytime I pulled the handle?"

 

"Yep."

 

"I… sorta remember that."

 

Derek nodded, then cleared his throat and continued. "You won sixty bucks and when the machine made all the lights and sounds, you got excited and started jumping around and you said it was a sign." Derek shifted his gaze to the ceiling and muttered, "And then I agreed and we both saw Elvis and decided _that_ was a sign."

 

Stiles gaped at him, astounded and frankly _impressed._ "How do you _remember_ all of this?"

 

"Werewolf healing. It sucks." Then Derek shrugged and finished the story with, "So then we went out on the street and found a cab and made it take us to the nearest open wedding chapel--"

 

"No, wait. It wasn't a cab," Stiles whispered, lips parted as little bits of memory began to return. "It was a limo. A stretch limo with… was there water?"

 

"A hot tub," Derek confessed, propping his elbows on the counter and dropping his forehead into his hands. 

 

"Because you wanted to romance me. You got champagne, but it--"

 

"Wasn't really champagne. It was sparkly apple cider."

 

"Oh my god. And it was a drive through wedding place. We got married in a drive thru and--"

 

"Went to Burger King for our reception. Yeah." Derek lifted his head, looked at Stiles, winced, and dropped his head back down.

 

"But… what happened after that?"

 

Derek's voice was slightly muffled, but still clear enough to understand when he said, "We found actual champagne. A _lot_ of actual champagne."

 

Stiles blinked at Derek, blinked at his plate, blinked at his coffee -- still clutched desperately in his hand, so he took a sip because even shock couldn't make him turn down coffee -- and then blinked at the marriage license. And it was… nice. It was nice, with curvy script and embossing and the paper was nice and thick and…

 

Okay, so his signature was a lot worse than normal, and Derek's S looped down into a happy face on the bottom part, but really it looked pretty fucking solid. It was _nice._

 

Stiles' gut twisted again, in something like sorrow this time, and he bit his bottom lip, not wanting his eyes to start watering for any reason other than pain because he could explain away pain but he couldn't explain why it was suddenly so sad to him that this beautiful piece of legally binding paper wasn't… real.

 

"Stiles?"

 

"It's okay," Stiles whispered hoarsely. "It's okay. We'll…" And then he stopped right there because he was a goddamn adult and so was Derek and he lived in Beacon Hills and Derek lived in Nevada and if the next few minutes went sideways, he never actually had to leave the state of California ever again. 

 

Right?

 

"Do you want to get an annulment? I mean, I think we can get one. We didn't do anything to like--"

 

"Pretty sure we were too drunk to do _anything_ about consummating our union." Derek shifted his weight, then lifted his head and sighed, reaching for the license. 

 

But Stiles reached for it too and held on when Derek went to tug it away. "Do you _want_ to get an annulment?"

 

Derek frowned at him. "What?"

 

"I mean…" Stiles licked his lips, thoughts thrumming through him at the speed of light and words tangling on his tongue, but not wanting to get this wrong. "What if we don't? What if we don't… get an annulment?"

 

"What."

 

"Derek. Look at me." Stiles waited, waited until Derek stopped glaring between Stiles' eyebrows and actually looked him right in the eye. "We could… not."

 

"Not what?"

 

"Not get an annulment. We could, you know. Stay." Stiles gave the license a tiny tug, just to underscore his words.

 

" _Stay._ Stay _married_?! Stiles, that's--" Derek's mouth just stayed open, right there, as his eyes darted between Stiles' and his lips quivered like he had words tangled up on his tongue too. "We don't even…"

 

"I know. Okay? I know. I know the logistics are a nightmare, but I also know that you're one of my best… people." Stiles frowned. "I never know what to call you, so it would be kinda nice to just be able to pin a label on you. I mean, we're friends, but more than that? At least, I think we are. Are we? You--"

 

"Yeah. We are, I think. But _marriage?_ "

 

"Well, I mean. Did you have other prospects? Am I preventing you from marrying the love of your life or something?"

 

Derek just leveled a bland stare at him, and Stiles… started to grin. 

 

"This. Derek? This could actually be really-- whoa shit. This could be amazing? I mean. Okay, so it started for all the wrong reasons, but isn't that like _the story of our lives_? Shit happens that's really off the wall or tragic or whatever and ends up being kinda awesome. I mean, not all of it, but at least the parts where we were together? We always triumph, right? No matter the odds. And just think--"

 

"Pence would hate it."

 

Stiles gawped, thrown off his train of thought. "What?"

 

"I mean, I think last night you said that Trump would fucking hate it, but really? The one I really want to stick it to is Pence with his electroshock bullshit." Derek's gaze met Stiles' and he grinned and it was… kinda nasty and kinda awesome and Stiles would later pinpoint it as the moment that he actually realized he could fall desperately in love with Derek for the rest of their lives. It was the smile of an unrepentant _asshole_ who wanted nothing less than to fuck some shit up.

 

Stiles… could really get behind someone like that. In _all_ the ways.

 

Stiles was an asshole's asshole, okay?

 

"So," he said, lifting his coffee and taking a long, shit-stirring slurp. "Derek Hale?"

 

"Hmm?"

 

Stiles pushed himself off his barstool and dropped to one knee. And it put him out of seeing range of Derek, but he was pretty sure this was the way it was supposed to be done.

 

"Will you do me the honor of staying married to me?"

 

"I dunno. Take me out to dinner tonight and we'll see." 

 

Stiles pulled himself up until he was able to make eye contact again. "You're gonna put out -- for _life_ \-- after just one date?"

 

"You were willing to without even _one_ ," Derek said, pursing his lips.

 

"Oh yeah. Good point. But I _did_ get romanced with a hot tub and sparkling apple cider, so."

 

"I expect _at least_ sparkling grape juice tonight," Derek murmured, his smile turning a little fond. "And definitely _no_ hangover in the morning."

 

Stiles rounded the counter, stalking right up to Derek and grabbing his cheeks, using that hold to smack a kiss to his slightly-gaping mouth. "Deal."

 

When he went to pull back, Derek grabbing him and pulled him back in, pressing his own, much longer, kiss on Stiles. "Deal," he murmured when they finally parted. " _Husband._ "


End file.
